Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff Read Free Book Online Page B

or even Arthgal might have done, while Gelert licked and licked at his bare arm.
    But he could not take Gelert with him, not into the Legions; for the Red Crests did not use dogs in war, as the Tribesmen
did. After a little while he scrambled to his feet and pointed back the way he had come. ‘Home. Go home. We are not hunting to-night, brother,’ he said huskily.
    The dog stood still. He looked uncertainly in the direction of Beric’s pointing finger, and then up into his face, whimpering.
    ‘Home,’ Beric said again, and walked on. Gelert padded after him.
    Beric halted again, and stooping, turned the dog round to face homeward. ‘Home,’ he ordered. ‘Off! Home, brother!’ and pointed his meaning with an open-palmed slap on the brindled rump.
    Still Gelert hesitated an instant, then he slunk off a little way, and checked, one paw raised, looking back. But Beric still pointed ‘Home! Go Home!’ and with drooping tail, Gelert went.
    Beric stood in the middle of the track, and watched until the last flicker of the brindled hide was lost in the criss-cross black-and-silver shadow-pattern of the moonlit forest. Then he turned his face once more towards his own people.

IV
    THE MEN FROM THE SEA
    T HREE days later, in the first fading of the spring twilight, Beric stood before the north gateway of Isca Dumnoniorum, watching the few people who still came and went through the archway, wanting to go in himself, but hesitating, wary as a wild animal that scents a trap. The battlemented walls of the frontier town looked unpleasantly strong, as though once inside there might be no getting out again … . But that was stupid, of course, and he could not stand here all night. A man went past him leading a string of three ponies with bales of merchandise on their backs, and Beric straightened his shoulders and, joining the tail of the string, followed it in under the massive arch, past the men in leather tunics and steel caps, with long spears in their hands, who stood on guard there.
    Just within the gates he came to another halt. So this was a town! A town such as his own people built! His first impression was of straight lines everywhere, straight walls and roof-edges, a long street running away from him straight as a spear-shaft until it lost itself in a confusion of deepening shadows. And the people! The shifting, busy, many-coloured crowd! Beric stood there in bewilderment until he found somebody shouting curses at him, and he had to leap aside to save himself from being run down by a fast mule-carriage sweeping out of a side street.
    ‘Are you deaf?’ someone was demanding. ‘Or just tired of life?’
    The mule-carriage rattled on, the little bells on the harness jingling, and Beric, gathering himself together, decided that the middle of a Roman street was no place in which to stand
and stare. Without more ado, he set off towards the fort, which was his reason for coming to Isca Dumnoniorum, and which he could see rising unmistakably above the end of a short side street.
    He turned in towards it, but where the few houses ended under the shoulder of the little hill, halted again, looking up the steep flinted road that lifted between vegetable plots to the gate of the fort. He had seen the fort from a long way outside the town, but somehow it had not looked so large and formidable as it did now: a lean, red, frowning fort, its gate-towers sharp edged against a watered sky. He had meant to go up there to-night, and tell whoever it was that one told these things to that he had come to join the Eagles; but it was growing late, and the light was going fast, and perhaps they would not let him in when once the light was gone. In the gathering shadows the fort seemed to crouch, watchful and faintly menacing, on its hill-top. Perhaps in the morning it would look less dangerous. If he went up there in the morning, it would be just as good as going up now. He had money for a night’s lodging—the money that Guinear had given